I would like to give a complete description of what lies in store when you are choosing a career in IT. This is purely based on my personal experience in this sector. At the time of writing this post, I have been in this industry for the past 7 and a half years.
Types of Firms one need to watch out for
1) Service sector - These companies take up the outsourced jobs. The variety of things ranges from DEVELOPMENT, PRODUCTION SUPPORT, CONSULTING. These companies derive their income based on how much hours they bill their workforce. So, there is a constant pressure. I have seen foul practices in this industry wherein when there is any unforeseen holiday, the employees are asked to report to work on weekend to compensate for the loss of billing. Companies such as TCS, CTS, INFOSYS, ACCENTURE, CAPGEMINI, etc can be categorized as service companies. These are best suited for people in the initial stages of their career as they get opportunity to work on variety of projects and hence they can accumulate lots of technical knowledge . Going ahead in the career, say for example when a person becomes a Project manager, it becomes difficult to get that person billed. Also, the salary paid for project manager when compared to the billed junior resources is too much. Hence we cannot expect much attention and care for the senior folks in these kinds of firms. Also, if a senior resource leaves, there won't be an attempt to stop him/her as the next campus interview will bring them lots of freshers and their last year recruits (freshers) would have matured by now and they can be used to groom these freshers. This is the kind of attitude exhibited by these firms. The only bonus would be like there will be onsite opportunities in this class of firms.
2) Captive units - These can also be called as offshored units. These are indian arms of MNCs and these are basically setup by companies that choose not to offshore certain projects. Reason could be that they want to develop their own knowledge base OR the projects are too secure to be outsourced. Unlike outsourced projects, here the employee will be continuing to work on one project for a very long tenure. More than technicality, the functional knowledge gained by the employee will be respected. Some of these firms pay year end bonuses too. Examples of these kinds of firms: Goldman Sachs, Nomura, Bank of America, Hewitt Associates, iNautix, etc. The kind of work would be a mix of both development and production support. Employee care would be the highest priority in these firms as when an employee leaves, the accumulated functional knowledge also goes away with the employee. There will be very less/limited onsite opportunities in these class of firms.
3) Product based - I haven't yet worked in this type of firm. However, the kind of technical knowledge one gets in these class of firms should be good.
